My students. We peer at each other through the narrow chinks of our caverns. Oh they are aware of their parents’ money and my own lack of rule. They pay up front in exchange for damaged goods. None of them realize that knowledge isn’t for sale, it’s for steal. Come and get it, nobody is giving you anything. Blank faces asking blank windows for answers. Blake says the last judgement begins when people come to think that imagination and intellect are of no use. Not important anymore. He says we will all see the end differently — an individually tailored vision. Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear? I hear the end of space and smell the end of time, it stinks a mile off. And then what? What is left after finite space and consecutive time? The infinite and the eternal, eternity’s mansions. What else? Blake says he saw the permanent realities of everything in fractal arrangement across differing levels of scale. From here he sees a person, approach and there appears a multitude. Withdraw to a farther distance and the multitude is an infant in a woman’s arms. Humanity on every level. Class yesterday, oh the humanity. Talked about Pyrrhus, murdered by an old woman with a ceiling tile. He’s the one who couldn’t win for losing. You, do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

Scene: [An endlessly large room once belonging to to all the infinite possibilities but now cavernously empty save for two people, Caesar and Pyrrhus. They have iron clamps around their wrists and ankles which are connected together by a series of chains. The symbol Ψ has been freshly branded onto their foreheads. Pyrrhus has an enormous lump on his head, bleeding].

Time: [speaking through the god mic] Nice work gentlemen, well done. You ousted some stubborn possibilities, but they are gone now to their own places. And here you are.

Caesar: Who said that?

Pyrrhus: It came from everywhere. What is it talking about?

Time: Everywhen. So let’s see, Caesar you are the Caesar whose wife felt there was some bad juju afoot but you ignored her and chose to go to work. Tough call that one. You had lots of other selves to boot out of here. Good ones too. I’ll be talking to them soon enough.

Caesar: What other selves? I’m here. This is me!

Time: [suppressing laughter] Well I say that, but I am talking to all of your other selves at this very moment. I say moment! I crack myself up sometimes. And Pyrrhus I see here that you also ignored a perfectly good prophecy and got yourself killed in Argos.

Pyrrhus: I’m dead?

Time: You are both dead and alive until somebody checks to see. Then your chances of one or the other are most likely 70/30.

Phyrrus: What?! 70/30 which way?

Time: Both. This is both/and, honey. Oh wait, look who I am talking to, you are the Phyrrus that came to pass in this universe, I forget that you think you are unique.

Caesar: [Voice trembling with outrage] Listen you, I demand you release me at once and return me to Rome. I have legions at my command and I will set them upon you with all force! Tell us no more of your insanity; I refuse to believe another word.

Time: Travel to other universes is strictly forbidden. And you will believe what you wish to be true. Isn’t that so Caesar?

Caesar: Humph. Rings a bell.

Pyrrhus: [Sobbing, snot dripping from his nose uncontrollably] But I am unique! Aren’t I? Can any other Pyrrhus be possible seeing that they never were? And what about me? I am here. I must be the only Pyrrhus possible. Right?

Time: Oh, you sweet thing. Here, blow. [A tissue drops from above, another floats up through the trap door].

Pyrrhus: Thanks. I’m just. I don’t know. I’m just upset.

Caesar: Candyass pussy.

Time: There there, honey, it’s ok. In another universe you feel perfectly happy.

Caesar: What are you talking about! You had better explain yourself or I’ll

Time: You’ll what? You are chained here. You live here now. This is it for you, you chose your part, this is what it is and for you this is the only is. Finito. There is no other option. Well there are infinite other options, everything that is possible happens, but this is the configuration of reality you chose. This particular you, that is. The moment you decided to ignore Calpurnia (not to mention that psychic who said the 15th would be challenging) and head off to the Senate, you split into copies of yourself. You do it all the time. Brush your teeth starting on the left, one copy of you is off to its own universe, start on the right, another copy of you in its own universe, etc. etc. ad infinitum. You are legion.

Pyrrhus: [Tearful] But I don’t feel myself splitting into copies. Wouldn’t we know?

Time: Do you feel the Earth rotate?

Caesar: It rotates?

Time: Bad example.

Pyrrhus: [Sniffing] Where are these worlds?

Time: Right here sweetie, all over the place.

Pyrrhus: [with rising panic] But, I’m confused. If all possible choices are always made, nothing left unchosen, then what about free will? Do we still have free will?

Time: Shh shh shh. There there, now. Just relax. All in good time.

[Time hums a lullaby from The Wind Weaver. Pyrrhus curls up on the floor and pats himself with smooth caresses. Caesar wraps his chains around Pyrrhus’ neck and pulls]

Hello. We have not yet met, though I confess I have been watching you. I hover in the background around these parts. Your name? I’m Genevieve. Pleased to meet you in person at last. You have nice eyes. I’m sorry, have I embarrassed you? I notice eyes. I keep my eye on a young man who frequents this place. I’m using his hands now. Not his eyes, oh no, they are terrible. He can hardly see! You should see the font size he uses. Still he is much better off than my mother was, before I cured her blindness. Yes, that was one of my miracles. Love me. Hey! I saw that. Don’t give me that look. I did cure her. I did. Ok fine, I was the one who made her blind in the first place. I’m sorry, ok, but she was being totally controlling; she didn’t want me to get married because she thought I was too young. It’s not like he wasn’t a nice guy, he was God! I wanted to be a bride of Christ, so shoot me. Ok, yes, I was only seven years old. But still. Anyway once when I asked to go to my boyfriend’s house to hang out, do a little worshiping, get out of doing housework, she grounded me and slapped me across the face. So I made her blind. But then I unblinded her. Eventually. Let’s not make a federal case of it. I am a saint. That means I am pure and good and people worship me. Now where were we. Oh yes. Stephen has terrible vision, that guy Jim is all but blind, and Stephen spent the morning trying to teach blind old Milton to a bunch of hung-over eye-rollers. Freshmen in the winter quarter aren’t scared anymore and it is clear he lost authority pretty much on day one. You can see it from space. So here I am, doing my community service. I look out for Stephen sometimes because he can’t very well look out for himself. See? I like the way your eyes move, back and forth like that. It’s nice. Steven was all about movement today. In his head, right behind his eyes. He had his students droning on about Lycidas “And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more.” Bore me to tears. I wish Stephen could see his student’s eyes when he teaches. Or be like me just once and peek under their lashes at what they are thinking. They would be much more interested in his thoughts than in his so-called lesson plans. Stephen was thinking today that reality must be the actualizing of whatever is possible. The movement of it. You see? Look over there, headed this way. It’s possibility, you see? Teeming multitudinous potential now moments. Not now yet. To be, but not is. Then there is the chosen one. I don’t mean my boyfriend! Not that kind of chosen one. I mean the now moment that rides between what could be and what was. The verb of the thing, you see? Reality doesn’t live in the multitudes of possibilities or in the chosen one event that turns into history. It is in the movement from what could be to what was. At least, that is what Stephen thinks today. Is he right? Well, that’s not for me to show you. He’ll figure it out in his tranquil brightness. His soul, you see? The form of forms. He was also thinking about dragons. That was fun. Blake’s dragons, you know. You know him? A real visionary that one. Nice eyes too. Big, widely set. Blake’s dragons emerge from their caves whenever there is a real battle that needs fighting. A war, the intellectual kind that happens in eternity. The kind of war that clears the way for creative work. And our boy Stephen, as reluctant as he may be, has some fights ahead. Anybody with eyes can see that coming.

Look at the snail. Lean neck, thick. Ugly. This is one of my students, Sargent. He waited after class for a usual reason. His weak eyes blind to the futility of his academic career. He can copy but not create. Still, somebody had loved him. Had borne him in her womb; two souls in the same body like the Nestorian Jesus. And she had borne him in her heart. This boneless snail, protected by amor matris from being trampled underfoot by the world. Well, all in good time. Still, she had loved his weak watery blood. Is that what Cranley meant? Is what she feels the most real thing in this stinking dunghill of a world? What would we ever know about what she feels? I see a white dove standing on a broken calculator. Beautiful. Horrible it is enlarging. White feathers are turning to fur, changing color, darkening, bristling. Brown. A bear standing on its back legs regarding me, calculating his path. He gives me sight, and he multiplies my bread and my beer. Now he is falling forward and catching himself with his front legs and with an intent I fear to place he moves. His haunches, his breath, he is closer now. He runs. He leaps over a protective female form my mother lying prostrate before the door. She is like the skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire and he is closer. I see his eyes even with mine, yellow now and the fur around them reddening. He strikes. He shrinks. He is shrinking. His largeness, his roundness melts into points, his ears and nose. I see him now small and slender. Merciless. I smell his thievery. The door and walls are gone and he scrapes the earth and listens. The stars wink. Complicit. At least they know why. And he scrapes the earth. I can hear him, I know what he is doing. And I know what he has done. Scrape. Listen.

Scene: [A narrow street in 12th century Cordoba, Spain. Two men are huddled together, tussling over a cracked mirror. They are fighting but palpably they are not angry. These men are close in age and have known each other since childhood.]

Averroes: [letting go suddenly so the mirror strikes Moses Maimonides in the chest] Fine. Go ahead and try. But you know you can’t reach him without me.

Moses Maimonides: (defeated, with a sigh) Together then. But I speak first.

Averroes: Agreed. Now make room, I can’t see.

Moses Maimonides: That better?

Averroes: Yes. Ok go.

Together: We call upon the ani

Moses Maimonides: Stop! I’m speaking first.

Averroes: Fine. Agreed. Let’s get on with it.

Together: We call upon the anima mundi, the great soul of the world, to show us in this mirror the face of the one we most believe, the seeker of pure truth.

[The face of Aristotle appears in the mirror. He is irritated.]

Aristotle: You two again. Sheesh, can’t you leave a man in peace? What do you want now? I’m busy. Aquinas and I were trying to prove some nonsense of his with algebra over lunch. Well, he was having lunch, I was in the mirror. So what now?

Averroes: I have found two words in your Poetics that I do not understand.

Moses Maimonides: No. Stop. Don’t listen to him. We want to ask you about resurrection. I think that once we are dead that’s it for the body. In the world to come we will be souls but won’t need bodies. I’m certain you believe this is true.

Averroes: Incoherence! That is the incoherence of incoherence! There will be no personal immortality; we are all participating in the same intellect. Now as for those words I cannot translate

Aristotle: Have you read nothing I have written. Read first before you bother me! Look. I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Focus on the here and the now. That should be enough for both of you. Stick with the observable and above all, break that mirror and leave me alone!

Averroes: But I must understand! What is the meaning of comedy and tragedy? What are these things?

(In a blaze of pyrotechnics Aristotle makes his exit. Moses Maimonides obediently, and also in an attempt to reach the other side, smashes his face into the mirror. It shatters and in the reflected multiplicities of the shards still falling, Moses Maimonides sees the reflection of Averroes and the bloody mess of his own face, perplexed, gently disappear.)

Amor Matris: subjective and objective genetive. How does this translate? I’ll try. There is a palace and in it is a stone and in that is a silence and in the silence my heart and sitting in that shrunken muscle: secrets. Tyrants weary of their tyrrany. Willing to be dethroned.

Whatisitnow? Whatisitnow? What is the matter? I hear sharp voices in strife. I am not listening. Whatisitnow! Those voices are sharp. The strife. I can’t hear anything. Whatisitnowhatisitnowhatisitnowhatisitnowhatisitnow? Sharp voices on all sides. Restore order. Wait for a moment.

Picked up paycheck. $634.88. Tried to make brief my bi-monthly appearance in the undergrad office for it. As it was in the beginning is now. And ever shall be? Got cornered by Deasy. Asked me to wait in his office. Shit. Tiny offices in Padelford. I think mine is in one of the sub-basements. I wouldn’t know, I don’t like descending there. Climbing back up my firm foot is always the one below, dragging. Deasy’s breakfast still on his desk. And a mirror to see his angry white moustache (rare) and illdyed hair. Makes the room smaller. Has shells in a mortar. Left over from grinding purple for the emperor. Hollow. Cowries for buying islands and leopard shells blocking their way. Symbols of beauty and power. The numbers on my paycheck, symbols of greed, pride, avarace, and lust.

My paycheck was $634.88. If I survive to see it, I get another one just as useless in half a month. Deasy says money is power. We are a generous people he says, but we must also be just. Who is this we? Generosity and justice. I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

Look. I’m not going to bullshit around. Everything depends on our understanding of Time. That’s the bottom line. Deasy’s memory of history is not my memory of history, and it is not yours either. Deasy exists in a world of final causation. He divides past present and future with mirrored boundaries all reflecting one great goal. An example. You want an example? Here’s an example. Today in his idolatry of Ronald Reagan he remembered the glory of a miraculous and masterfully designed arms reduction accord with the Soviet Union. But under Reagan’s presidency the cold war’s arms race escalated to extremes and the reduction made only a small dent in the pile of history destroying weaponry. History destroying. If only we could. How do we destroy the nonexistent? Deasy remembers a great immortal statesman. His version of temporality cannot remember the Alzheimers, the shaking, the fumbling of words, the confusion, the memory gaps, the days filled with photo-ops starting at noon and ending at five, the disappearances to his rooms, the handlers, minders, babysitters, doctors, the wife feeding him his lines. There are people who hold this history. Who? Whose memory is this? Whose history? Is it created through symbolic causation? Deterministic causation? Probabilistic causation? Does it matter? It does. I know it does. Look. If you divide past present and future and picture it on a line with the past receding back there somewhere and the future in front of us, then history moves away from relevancy. That’s one way to understand time. But is time a line? Oh our memory returns things to us we thought had long drifted away. Nothing drifts anywhere. Think of a memory now. Go ahead, root around in there and find a big one. See that scar over there? That one with the nasty scab? Ew that looks bad. Pus. Infection, it has spread into memories around it. What was that horrible thing that happened to you? Jeez. Ok, pick the scab. Go ahead, you can do it. I’m right here. It’s ok. Pick it right off and let it bleed a little. That’s it. There you go. That memory sure feels like it is happening again now, doesn’t it? Still hurts. Or rather, it hurts again. It’s not back; it’s always been there. It’s real. Is time a line? You tell me.

Deasy has framed pictures of racehorses in his office. Don’t think about it. Stop. Under the elfin riders the horses. Stop. Monsterous large burst their frames, riding gigantic and oh no I am shouting with the crowds and with Cranley. Place your bets, parimutuelly. No. That horse is racing, looking with his dot eye, wagering against me. He wears oranges. That orange scent of the meatfaced woman in front of us. I smell it! Oh god that horse. Looking at me! Its spearspike baited with men’s blood and guts and jousting aiming for me. Shock. Time split open, I feel it rebounding against me shock by shock. The joust of life. I am the frozen deathspew of the slain. A shout of spearspikes! What! What? When? Now, then. Oh God it stopped. It stopped. Oh thank God. My breath. I feel sick.

May I trespass on your valuable space? I’m Cassandra. I was just invoked. You know, think about me a little and poof, here I am! Most of the time you don’t know it, or if you do you don’t want to, but that’s what happens. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest that you don’t believe me. Believe me, nobody listens to me. You know, I’ve grown enough to admit that never being believed used to upset me a little bit. Just a little. Ok, enormously. It was everything. Frankly, it made me crazy. But I’ve had a little therapy with what’s his name. That Swiss Tweedledum (not to be confused with the Viennese Tweedledee) and now I am more than perfectly unaffected by the reactions of others to my truth. A transcendent level of perfectly unaffected. Except I do have some guy issues. Got pretty screwed over by a boyfriend once. His name was Apollo, you might have heard of him. There’s also Ajax but I can’t talk about that yet. Anyway, Apollo was a lot like that chick who was no better than she should be. You know the one. No, not that one. Not Helen who caused that whole mess back in Troy, no. I mean Torralba. Is that how you spell it? Torralva. Same difference. Sounds the same. Anyway, she’s no Helen of Troy. Torralba’s face launched a thousand ships too, but those were getting away! Sorry. Sweet kid really. Stout, kind of a wild child. Has a moustache that she pretends isn’t there. Somebody ought to tell her to take care of it, but how? Awkward. I told her keeping that thing on her lip was not going to work out for her but she didn’t listen. So frustrating! I could just! Ok, breathe. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Total awareness. Got it, I’m cool. Have to keep centered or I’ll end up in crazytown again. So what was I saying? Oh yeah, Torralba. She met a decent, good looking guy with a steady job. Ok it was a job herding goats but still. He loved Torralba and since nothing is less attractive to a woman than a guy who adores her, she didn’t want anything to do with him. Creepy. Came on way too strong too fast. On the first date he said his mother would love her, how many kids do you want, and I’ve always seen myself getting married on the beach. Yikes. She changed her digits, all of them. And as one must, the nice goat-herd turned into a complete jackass who hated her for rejecting him. Then of course, as is customary, once the goat-herd started treating Torralba like complete shit she decided that she loved him. Happens every time. A loves B, B doesn’t love A. Then A hates B which makes A suddenly irresistible. If A+B=B-A then A-B=A*∞. And around it goes. Of course we all would rather end up with ((A+B)=(B-A))/((A-B)=(A*∞)) = ∏/4 but not everybody finds their soul mate. Apollo loved me but faster than I rejected him he totally screwed me over. So here’s the bottom line. You are going to fall into this same trap. Don’t be like Torrabla or her goat-herd! Or Apollo. Or me. Beware. Believe me. Come on, I can tell when somebody is blowing me off, mark my words, there is danger ahead. Listen to me! Oh crap. Calm blue ocean. Calm blue ocean. Breathe in through the nose. And out. Good. Ok. So you seem to be eavesdropping on Stephen a bit. He has father issues, you know. And he’s been spending too much time around the English department lately. I told him it would be no good for him but did he listen? Acted like he couldn’t even see me. Deasy wants his help getting an article published. Lots of paranoia there, thinks somebody might get there first, this is my idea not your idea. Same old bullshit. I told him to strike while the iron is relevant but will he listen to me? He won’t, nobody does. You know, you might look into what you’ve been doing to that body of yours. You know what I mean, don’t pretend you don’t. Your doom is coming. Don’t say I didn’t tell you. Believe me if you will. What will it matter if you wont? It comes when it comes, and soon you’ll see it face to face and say that the seer was all too true. You will be moved with pity.

2 Responses to Pluterperfect Imperturbability

Do you know I am not even sure what this book is about other than it takes place over the course of a day .so I look fwarrod to your updates. Plus knowing you’re going to post on it weekly keeps you reading! I’ve decided I have too many books started so I am not joining in my library group, though it would have been a great opportunity. I will live/read vicariously through you!

He calls America’s Jews sowers of schism. He suggests that Jewish members of the Bush administration pushed the United States into a middle eastern war so they might steal the Jewish vote from the democrats. The theory: the nearly half of the world’s Jews who live in America would support a war against anybody who threatens the nearly other half of the world’s Jews living in Israel. Oh his paranoia. His signs of the nation’s decay. His government in the hands of the Jews. His Jews at their work of destruction. He stood within a sunbeam and pushed with his eyes. They sinned against the light his eyes complained. And his eyes said look, you can see the darkness in their eyes. His lantern eyes projecting. He sees threat in Jewish money. He complains of a new anti-Semitism damping his lantern jaws from speaking in the old ways against Zionism. His predicament, what’s so new? His eyes have sniffed out a new Jewish problem. I say it’s all two in one and one in two, and however you divide it from itself it stinks of an anti-Semite problem. And greater than this a human problem. We are all condemned to wander the earth. Time will surely scatter us all.

Why is history a nightmare from which I am trying to awake? I’ll tell you why. We are consigned to the moment we choose to experience. That’s it. Done. Once we’ve turned a moment of now into an event that’s past then that’s that. Live with it. All other possibilities are impossible. History is a trap. I’ll admit this to you, I don’t give a shit, I’m telling you. I am paralyzed by my lot in time. The pain of it. I can’t help it. None of us can. You can’t either. The events of my life have shaped me to what I am at this moment and I am afraid. The choices I’ve made cannot be unmade. And worse, the actions I choose not to perform can never be possible again. No wonder I feel guilt. No wonder I am estranged from the light. Are you afraid too? I’ll lay it on the line for you: it is not just about the things I have done or not done. History is nightmarish because the more choices I make, the more compounded are the infinities of possibilities that are no longer available. Finito. Untouchable. Pick a slim number of things to do to say to never do to never say, and you leave an infinity unchosen. I could have, I should have, I might have, I would have. There is no waking from this nightmare. I am trying but what if at that sweet moment of consciousness that nightmare gives me a back kick? So I go back to lucid dreaming. Deasy is waiting for history to perfect itself into deity. But listen to that? You hear that? That shout? That’s God. There’s God. A shout in the street is all the deity there is. Come one, you know what I mean. You can sniff out the truth. Smell it. When was the last time you shouted for any reason? Joy, fear, rage, ecstasy, what have you. Feel it now. During that shouting moment, that tiny moment, in the space of that sweet bit of infinity in the palm of your hand, you have no idea of history at all. No thought of it, no need of it, no influence from it, no back kick, no memory, no guilt, no remorse, no horrible regret, no nothing. Shout and you are free. You transcend. You are the manifestation of God.

1. Mary discussed success re: her own case. Talking points were her unexplained pregnancy and potential social disaster. PR push. Damage control. Result: everybody thinks she’s a virgin and the daughter of her own son. She is now widely esteemed with stellar poll numbers particularly in Latin America and parts of Europe.

4. Helen of Troy. Blamed for Trojan war / fall of Troy, labeled a runaway wife but was kidnapped. Fault: Aphrodite. Also, Menelaus not most ideal husband. And Helen from Sparta not Troy.

5. Mary Magdalene. Reputation as notorious prostitute. Victim of slander, possibly at the hands of Martha (sister). In later stages of PR campaign. Discussed her campaign as example for new clients Eve and Helen. Success of Da Vinci Code campaign.

Action Items:

1. Contact apple growers associations in top ten apple producing countries for possible promotional opportunities, or photo ops with focus on developing a more positive association between the apple and Eve (tree of knowledge) & Helen (apple of discord.)

Deasy sends me today to what is left of the print news with his letter on foot and mouth disease. He has no chance but I did not say no. He sees I was not born to be a teacher. I said I am a learner, rather. But what is it to be born to something? I was born, yes, but I will die. I was born to that. And I don’t mind. I don’t. I look forward to it. Dying, no. That can only be horrible. But death. Yes. I will take death. Think of the languid peace of it. The freedom from the worlds and worlds of choices I will never have to make or not make. Do or not do. To be and not to be, that’s what you get every time. No. I’ll take death as my fate. I was born to it.